Is It Possible?

Way of the Cross over the Brooklyn Bridge 2009

2009-04-11T08:07:00.001-07:00

Earthquake in the Abruzzi Region: Passion of Man, Passion of Christ

2009-04-09T09:24:00.000-07:00

EARTHQUAKE IN THE ABRUZZI REGION
Passion of Man, Passion of Christ

Another upsetting event has saddened us deeply. It is so upsetting as to
make it difficult for us to escape the question about its meaning, while
we can hardly comprehend it.

This issue is as radical as uncomfortable. We cannot try to settle it in a
hurry, or want to turn the page as soon as possible to forget about it. It
is not reasonable to remain prisoners of emotions that suffocate us, and
even less to shift our attention to any possible responsible parties.

The boundless acts of charity that have been spontaneously demon-
strated in the last few days, and that will be even more necessary in the
next few months, indicate that forgetting about upsetting events is not
the only way. Yet, not even these initiatives can exhaust the urgency of
the question raised by our experienced impotence facing the earthquake.

Events like these place us in front of the mystery of existence, by pro-
voking our reason and freedom as men. By wasting an opportunity to
face this mystery, we would be left even more lost and skeptical. But in
order to stay in front of the mystery of existence, we need something
more than our solidarity, as just as it may be. We cannot do it on our
own.

The company of Christ – which is at the origin of our people’s love for
man – is once more decisive in our history: a company that gives sense
to life and death, to victims, to survivors, and to us. It sustains our hope.

This coming Easter, then, acquires new light. «He who did not spare His
own Son, but handed Him over for us all, how will He not also give us
everything else along with Him?» (Rm 8,32).

Communion and Liberation

April 2009

Faith, Hope, Memory

2009-03-23T04:45:00.000-07:00

"If faith is to recognize a Presence that is certain, hope is to recognize with certainty a future that is born of this faith; faith is to recognize a Presence with certainty; from this certainty, certainty for the future is born.

To recognize the content of a Presence that began two thousand years ago, to recognize it present now. What is this called? Memory. Therefore hope has a radical link with the word memory, so that without memory there can be no hope."

(Giussani, Is It Possible? Hope, 8,
line break inserted).

"Without memory there can be no hope." The example that comes to me is that of Massah and Meribah. The note in the NAB Bible for Exodus 17:7 reads "Massah... Meribah: Hebrew words meaning respectively, 'the (place of the) test,' and 'the (place of the) quarreling.'"

The people of Israel had no hope because they had no memory. Imagine: living as slaves in Egypt, living through the 10 plagues while the Egyptians were afflicted, walking through the Red Sea and seeing Pharaoh's army drowned as they pursued, singing the great song of Exodus 15 — which we remember every Easter! — Imagine: after all this, coming into the desert and then despairing at what would happen next. So when Moses splits the rock, he's striking God's heart (the objective correlative of quarreling with God), and this is what we do when despite our personal history, despite the two-thousand-year history of the Church, despite the history of Israel — despite all this, we test God and pierce the side of Christ.

I had always thought of Moses getting water from the rock in a pragmatic sort of way: the people were thirsty and God provided water to them. No — the mercy is that despite our despair and faithlessness, God remains faithful; despite our betrayals and incoherence, God offers mercy and forgiveness and even continues to sustain us corporally and provide for our bodily needs.

I don't want to dwell on this sin, except to say that there is a point of decision, a point where one decides to risk with the One who has begun a good work in us.

Instead, it's better to remember our history (putting ourselves into past events as a witness): to read the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, to read the Fathers of the Church, and those other times and places where Christianity has been lived vibrantly, to look at those places and events (the Portico of Soloman) where God's glory is being revealed now. Got hope? Get memory.

Lent, Holy Week, and Easter — like Passover — is a time of memory. How can we build unless we first look to the foundation that God has built?

Bernard's Questions of the Heart

2009-03-20T04:22:00.000-07:00

I've been living for a couple of weeks with these questions before me: what do I love? what do I fear? what makes me rejoice? what makes me sad?

Lest I deceive myself, St. Bernard reminds me to "observe carefully" - in other words, what I love, what I fear is revealed in my actions, and can be observed when I catch myself off guard or when I face an unexpected problem. What do I love: what do I make time for? What is it that I do when I have a free moment? What do I fear: what do I avoid and why? More often than not, it's the unknown that I fear - which is silly because in every case that I've met the Unknown (every day of my life!) - I am always surprised by its goodness.

Rejoicing and sadness are a bit easier, because in both cases something happens first which causes me to rejoice, which causes me to be sad. One thing I discovered (in sales over the phone) is that hearing no doesn't make me sad; instead, both no and yes cause me to rejoice. What saddens me is when judgment is evaded, or if someone lacks affection for themselves and their employees.

Something that occured to me in reading St. Bernard's exhortation: what should I love? what should I fear? What love and fear are "involved when you turn to God with your whole heart"? As a monk, St. Bernard knew that the answer to this question was readily available to the monks in the Psalms, our school of affectivity.

Here is the law of the heart as proclaimed on the Third Sunday of Lent:

"[the precepts of the Lord] are more precious than gold,
than a heap of purest gold;
sweeter also than syrup
or honey from the comb" (NAB).

If we read the Psalms paying attention to these words: happy, fear, love, rejoicing, we begin to discover a new affectivity, a renewed way of meeting the world.

Four Questions on the Heart from St. Bernard

2009-03-10T17:51:00.000-07:00

Saint Bernard, the great Cistercian Abbot, gave a Chapter talk to his monks during Lent. In it he admonished them:

“Observe carefully what you love, what you fear, what makes you rejoice, what causes you to be sad. See whether under your religious habit you have a worldly soul, and whether, hidden by the cloth of conversion, your heart is perverse. The whole of the heart is in these four affections and in these four is comprised, as I see it, all that is involved when you turn to God with your whole heart”
(Sermo 2.3 in Quadragesima PL 183: 172D).

Thanks to Fr. Meinrad for this snippet which he shared with us during the Fraternity Lenten retreat in Atchison, Kansas. Enough here for many examinations of conscience...

Experience

2009-03-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

I am so moved by what happened during and after our Fraternity (of Communion and Liberation) Lent retreat this weekend. Between the content of all Fr. Roberto said and his sharing his life with us, there is so much to turn over in my heart.

But what is standing out for me so powerfully is Fr. Roberto's insistence that we meet Christ in everything that happens, as it happens. There is no separation between Christ and my work, Christ and my friendships, Christ and my heart. All of reality is infused with his miraculous Presence.

In which case, before I can serve Christ in you, I must first meet him in you. That is, when I come face-to-face with you, I am coming face-to-face with the Lord of history, in all the Mystery and awesome power that that entails. By "you," I don't just mean you to whom I'm writing now -- I mean every person (and really all Creation!). Sometimes we worry about the lack of reverence we or others have in front of the Eucharist -- what about our colossal lack of reverence in front of each other?

So, then what is the purpose or special role of the baptized, if all reality is Christ meeting me now? We are baptized into this awareness (the better word is faith) and our life's work is to witness to one another about this Reality, this fact of existence. As witnesses, we must continually testify to Christ's Presence to one another -- and not let any one of us forget or slip into vagueness on this point. And because the witness testifies, he takes on the role of Christ; his witness means that he conforms more to the person of Christ, so that he, like Christ, is the one who makes this Presence known and felt in the world. In other words he manifests, more profoundly and more acutely, this Presence of Christ and is thus recognizable as a member of the living Body of Christ in the world.

So let's do the work of looking, of reminding ourselves that Christ is before us continually. Let's tell each other what we see!

So, my question to everyone is, what's happening? What do you see? And when we tell each other what's happening and what we see, let's do it out of charity to one another -- as the most important charitable work there is -- we will be helping one another to see one miracle after another. And we will get better and better at seeing these things, the more we practice this looking at reality with new eyes.

Yesterday, when the retreat was over, I drove Anna (a high school girl from Italy who is spending a year in the U.S.) back to her host parents, she spoke to me about how loving and generous this couple was, and about her deep affection for them, which was evident in every word. She told me about how the wife was expecting her first baby in July and about how she (Anna) was leaving in June and would miss seeing the baby -- with a little regret but not deep disappointment, because she is certain that either they will come with the baby to Italy to visit or she would be back to see them again. I was moved for several reasons -- but mostly because a girl her age could leave her home and her friends and travel from a rather large city (Milan) to a tiny town in Ohio and develop such deep affection for a couple of adults whom she could have easily treated as simply a launching pad for her American adventure with other American teenagers. But it was even more astonishing to meet her host father. There was nothing cosmopolitan or fascinating about this man on the surface, but Anna loved him as a father, this much was evident. I remembered Fr. Giussani's definition of forgiveness: the capacity to tolerate difference. What mercy I witnessed in the five minutes I stayed in that home before heading back to my home! The way Anna loved this man was a keener witness than anything she could have said about this relationship. May we love one another in this way!!

Recognizing Christ (is this how we look at one another?)

Preparing for the Fraternity Lent Retreat

2009-02-23T13:24:00.000-08:00

Here is my summary of pages 28-40 of the 2008 Spiritual Exercises of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation ("This is the Victory that Conquers the World, Our Faith"). These pages will be the focus of the Fraternity Lent retreat this year.

1. Those who believe have eternal life:

We first receive this life, which derives from faith, at Baptism: "The only thing that makes faith reasonable is its promise to bring us life. This is why God intervened in history, to bring us this life, and this life reaches us in Baptism" (p. 28).
"Baptism is the sacrament of faith, which, however needs the community of believers" -- "Baptism encorporates us into the community of believers through the fact of becoming one person in Christ" (29).
But if we're not careful, we can reduce our companionship to its external appearance: "If there's not a personal 'I' that says 'You' to Christ, as you say it to a man who is present, Christ is 'bleached or faded away from the beautiful and glad appearance of the companionship of faces that should have been a sign pointed to Him!' but we stop there; we stay there with the sign.
"It's as if one of us had received a stupendous bouquet of flowers, and never tired of talking about the bouquet of flowers, but felt no urgency to say the name, to speak about the person who had given the flowers."
Two temptations to avoid: "first, conceiving a Christ without Church, that is, excluding Christ from reality, to a far-away supernatural world, and reducing Him to our interpretation or our measure, or, second, having a Church without Christ, where the Church is perceived not as the body of Christ, that makes Him present, but as the substitution of Christ.
"Jesus Christ isn't a presence isolated in far-off history, so as to seem the fruit of imagination. He is a Presence ten years after His death, a thousand years after His death, two thousand years after His death, up to today, through this different humanity of the saints, a human presence impossible to think up" (33).
"Anything but Christ in the abstract! He is something so real that through His historical presence in the Church and His witnesses, He becomes a reality that can't be reduced by any attempt of ours, challenging man's heart, reason, freedom, and affection. Anything but abstract!"
"Our companionship isn't here to spare us the drama of freedom, but to continually provoke our responsibility.... 'Our companionship means not to let time pass without our life asking, seeking, wanting the relationship with God present and without our life wanting or accepting that companionship, without which not even the image of His presence would be true'" (34).
"Christ reaches us through our communion to introduce us to a relationship with Him, so the Mystery may become familiar" (34).
"The test of faith, of the true relationship, not virtual, not with someone abstract, is satisfaction. Only if we experience faith as satisfaction, the greatest satisfaction one can imagine, because of the hope that He has brought forth in me, do we have an experience so powerful that it sustains all of life, because life consists in the affection that sustains us most, not outside reality, that sustains in satisfaction, in the unique correspondence that Christ is for life" (36).

2. New Knowledge and affection:

"The new knowledge is born of the adhesion to an event, born of the affectus for an event to which one is attached, to which one says yes. [ You have to say yes. Faith is a free gesture: you need to say yes to this event, so that this newness can begin to happen.]" (37).
"To think, starting from an event, means first of all accepting that I don't define that event, but rather, that I'm defined by it" (37).
"the new judgment is possible only in a continual relationship with reality, in other words, with the human companionship that prolongs in time the initial Event: it proposes the authentic Christian point of view. The Christian Event persists in history, and with it persists the origin of the new judgment" (38).
"Remaining in the position of origin in which the Event brings forth the new knowledge is the only chance for relating to reality without preconceptions" (38).
"In order to acquire this, a work is necessary. 'For the mentality to be truly new, it's necessary that out of its consciousness of "belonging," it continually engage in comparison with present events. Since this new mentality is born of a present place, it judges the present. Otherwise it doesn't exist: if it doesn't enter into the experience of the present, the new knowledge doesn't exist, is only an abstraction. In this sense, not to make judgments on events is to mortify faith'" (39).
"Faith grows in this way, risking it in reality and challenging everything with Him in our eyes. This is why it's not a matter of learning a discourse by heart and repeating it, but learning a gaze, says Fr. Giussani" (39).
"How can we learn this gaze? 'It's a matter of staying before the event encountered': it's the precedence given to the event, to what happens, to what He does" (39).

3. Witness, the task of life:

"Mission can be nothing other than a more acute awareness of what Christ means for life, because only to the degree that we live this newness will we feel the urgency of mission" (40).

The Apostle Paul on Hope

2009-02-18T20:19:00.001-08:00

To assist our work on hope, here are the passages speaking of hope in the first few pages of Volume 2 of Is it Possible to Live this Way? I quote the passages as they appear in the book, but I have linked the NAB to facilitate looking at the context of each quote.

Romans 5:1-2

"Justified therefore by faith, we are in peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ; through Him we have also obtained through faith, the possibility of acceding to this grace and in which we find ourselves, and of which we boast in the hope of the glory of Christ."

2 Corinthians 3:12

"Strong in such hope we're full of certainty."

1 Thessalonians 1:3

"Hope that is the Lord Jesus."

1 Timothy 1

"Paul apostle of Jesus Christ by the command of God our Saviour and by the command of Jesus Christ, our hope."

1 Timothy 4:10

"We labour and suffer reproach because we have place our hope in the living God."

* *

* * *

* *

Faith - the first page of this book also refers to a few scripture passages on faith.

"the just man lives by faith"

Habbakkuk 2:4

"justice is faith"

Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38

Hope and the Horror of Loneliness

2009-02-15T11:31:00.000-08:00

Today's first reading, Lv 13:1-2, 44-46, presents us with the shame of disease and sickness which isolates the infected person from life in human society. Sin has a certain similarity to leprosy. We tend to think of sin as a small blemish on our forehead, but it can spread, destroying our limbs and tearing apart friendship and neighborhoods. The words of Leviticus 13 must have sticken terror into the hearts of ancient people: "The one who bears the sore of leprosy [...] shall cry out, 'Unclean, unclean!'" What hell on earth to be cut off from everyone for the rest of one's life! And yet in the reading is the faintest gleam of hope, which must have seemed impossible for one who discovered in himself the stigma of leprosy: "As long as the sore is on him he shall declare himself unclean" (NAB). Could anything reverse this corruption and save us from such a death in life?

The black smudge of a cross we will receive on Ash Wednesday is a public confession of our corruption and the death we rush toward (even as it also forms the hopeful sign of the cross). Uncleanliness is not just the problem of lepers — it's my problem too. As Fr. Antonio López has written: "Ultimately, every fear is the flourishing of a suspicion that loneliness may well be the final word on human existence" (Communio 35: 174).

What a reversal it must have been for the leper in today's Gospel! Imagine the poverty and trust he would have needed in order to say, if you wish, you can heal me. And how could he have kept silent about such a restoration? But what unknown joy may have resulted from this impossible obedience?

A new hope has dawned in the world. And the seeds of this hope are firmly rooted in the human, creaturely soil of Mary of Nazareth. Fr. López tells us that "With a faith that will grow along with her child, Mary knows that a person may entrust himself entirely to God without fearing that God will desert him. Thus, we see the truth of man's constitutive relation with God in God's indwelling in Mary, and through her, in man" (179). Fr. López continues "It is characteristic of faith that it roots man in the present. Precisely because Christ brings the Father's mercy into history, however, he also becomes the certainty for the future. Hope, in this sense, is the most beautiful fruit of faith because it is the certainty that love's ever-surprising presence will remain" (179-80).

We are not alone. And nothing can separate us from the love of God. Through Mary, Jesus has taken on the stigma of human sin even to a shameful and unjust death on the cross. Having embraced sin and death, Jesus binds sinners to Himself, conquering and reversing the destructive isolation of sin. Henceforth, sin does not have the last word, but mercy. The only thing left to isolate us is self-sufficiency, self-righteousness, a smug misguided confidence in our own goodness and niceness. For, as Origen so well expressed it: Outside the Church, which is the house of Rahab [the redeemed sinner], no salvation. Hope is for those who recognize that all merit comes from Christ's faithfulness to the Father. Hope is the certain trust that God's present actions are a promise for eternity.

Work: Tenaciously Seeking the One Who Has Found Me

2009-01-30T19:58:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago my job ended, and in the same moment my company assigned me a new job. In some ways what was lacking in the first job gave me a hunger for aspects of the new job that otherwise I wouldn't have had a taste for. My new job is more demanding and requires greater accountability. I need toil in my life in order to grow, and I'm grateful to have been put into a position where I could want it.

Several recent articles in Traces have helped me understand work better, and which I've blogged about at Broken Alabaster (1, 2). I've also been challenged by Scott, Sharon, and Suzanne to meditate on the theme of the Diakonia: "Something that Comes First," notes from a talk of Fr. Giussani's at an assembly in 1993:

"Ten or twenty years later, the same experience proceeds if your point of departure is the impact with a new reality and, 'as a child rests in its mother's arms,' you abandon yourself, follow, obey, because that diversity doesn't spring from your imagination or thought, from your dialectical skill or your obstinancy, from everything, that is, that has kept you away for years: it's something other, irreducibly new — an event — to be obeyed" (4).

The word that recurs in this talk is "diversity" or "human diversity." Now, this different humanity is someone whom I've met who paradoxically brings me closer to the most diverse people I may speak with during the day. The word diverse reminds me that I will always be surprised by this different humanity. It means that those I regard as adversaries may in fact bring me to gape in wonder at the world. Something different, new, an event, obedience — where better to find all this than at work: where reality resists the inevitible expectations of my thoughts, and where assigned tasks bring me together with people that I wouldn't find through common interests or the usual affiliations and associations?

How can it be that I'm discovering the value of work at the age of 41? I've seen it before — more than once — and yet now there's something else. My friend, Salvatore, pointed out bluntly: "you need stability," and I agreed with him, but how to find stability? When I mentioned this need to another friend, he pointed me to a definition in Is It Possible to Live this Way, vol 1: "[virtue] is a habitually correct attitude toward the known object" (117). Over time, this definition has percolated within me. It's one thing to realize at this moment or another moment the value of work, the greatness of reality, the gift of human diversity; it's another to cultivate the habit of rediscovering it every day, every hour, every minute. And how do I rediscover it? By obeying, by submitting to my condition — not blindly or like a robot — but wholeheartedly giving myself to the needs that I see in front of me. And I'm never disappointed when I do — I'm always surprised by something great. What's really amazing is that on a day like today, a lazy, distracted day filled with excuses, this tender sprout of a virtue is still with me and presses with certainty that something great is here if only I would look for it. The victory is not me, not my coherence, but that someone great has found me, and if I turn I will see him.

Advent Retreat 2008

2008-12-07T18:43:00.000-08:00

Beginning Day, which was only two weeks ago, startled me a bit. I had thought of this previous year as a time when the School of Community I attend was a bit stuck, not yet being publically announced, and not being missionary enough. But at the Beginning Day, I saw that despite my feeling stuck, things in this area have been moving — like the blooming of a flower shown in fast forward.

On Saturday, I attended the Advent retreat, which was up at the Abbey Crypt Church at St. Benedict's Monastery in Atchison, Kansas. Fr. Meinrad led us. I saw Daniele, Salvatore, and others. As usual, Salvatore said a couple of words that really cut through to the core of what I need to do. I saw Francis again and met Michael, two students at Benedictine College. Listening and taking notes have become something ordinary, a continuation or a heightening of the work done during the week or at School of Community. I appreciated the way that Fr. Meinrad brought in lines from the liturgy of this time but also what he has been reading, Mother Teresa's Secret Fire.

I pondered a bit the Messianic secret of St. Mark's Gospel: Jesus tells those cured to say nothing, but they can't help but announce what God has done for them. And, I thought a bit about St. Joseph, who is depicted in a chapel below the Abbey Church. Joseph is holding a mallet in one hand and a nail in the other but he has no tension toward that act. Instead, he watches with care as Jesus the toddler imitates the act with an earnestness. How did Joseph witness to Jesus? He too guarded the Messianic secret, and yet how could it have been kept from anyone that Joseph came into contact with? Jesus is here with us as He was with St. Joseph. Witness begins with a changed humanity and culminates in the explicit announcement, but only after the straining of every sinew has witnessed first.

We do things to tell others that we have done them (observes Pascal), but what is primary is that we take the journey of knowledge first. In Mark's Gospel, the parable of the sower comes a little bit after the pharisees chastise the disciples for picking grain on the Sabbath. Did Jesus see grain fall on the ground at this point and wonder at the destiny of every seed? that one will feed the birds and that one will sprout and die, but that other one will fulfill itself and produce more grain. But this is also how the birds are fed, and man also in more ways than one. So, Jesus would seem to say, the main thing is not first of all telling what happened, repeating to others the impression one had in a moment. Instead, look at what happens, ask what is the ultimate source, meaning, and teleology of it — abide in what happens first of all, for yourself, as an awareness of who cares for you in this way — and then, when you can't hold it in any longer, you may share it with others.

QOTD: Carrying the Answer to the Crisis

2008-11-15T09:35:00.000-08:00

Then, political commitment is approached as cultural work, because we are aware of what it means to work for a cultural need. It is a question of the awareness of a people that grows deeper and deeper, in contact with the events, the clarity that we carry within us the answer to the crisis.

Our position in cultural commitment is that of a people that deepens its awareness of carrying within itself the principle that can resolve the crisis for everyone. We bring salvation.

Fr. Giussani, In Faith, Man and People

Obedience and the Shema Yisrael

2008-11-02T07:47:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Suzanne for bringing in the Hebrew. One of the priests at my parish last week preached on Jesus's allusion to the Shema in the Gospel of Matthew.

Mt 22:34-40 (NAB)

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a scholar of the law tested him by asking, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."

And here is what the Shema says:

"Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One
(Blessed be the Name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever). And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them. When you sit at home, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. And these words that I command you today shall be in your heart."

Fr. Giussani has a way of mentioning significant details in an offhand way, and it's only during the Assembly that somebody presses on and gets to the importance of the details. And here's what Don Gius says about his friends, Manfredini and DePonti:

"Why did I become such a great friend of Manfredini and DePonti, whom I was always with? From third year of high school to fourth year of theology we were always together — always — I mean always! — and nobody ever said anything because the great reason that we were together was so evident to everyone. In fact, anyone who showed up, at any moment of the day or week, would have heard us speaking about certain things, so much so that a lot of people said, 'Oh brother, not those guys again! and they left. The same people who left other things! Why did we, who didn't even know each other, become such close friends? Because we began to intuit and to speak about certain things, things apart from which life was not worth living. This was the depth that God gave us the grace to have at thirteen or fourteen years old: to understand that apart from certain things, in other words, from Christ, life was not worth living in the literal sense of the term. (Is it Possible? Vol 1, p150).

To hear, shema, is to listen, to ponder, to speak of at all times and strive to understand and internalize it more. To set up reminders on one's head (thoughts) and on one's hand (action), at the doorpost and gate (the transition between house and world). Or as Fr. Carrón said in La Thuile in August, "Testimony doesn't mean words, but an experience perceived, penetrated, lived, felt, inevitable, inexorable, superabundantly evident."

To attend and to speak (to listen and to witness)

2008-11-01T20:27:00.000-07:00

This post is a footnote to Fred's post, Whoever gives up his or her own point of view to follow Jesus...becomes a person capable of facing anything.

Proverbs 21:27-31 (from the Interlinear Bible: Hebrew, Greek, English), a literal translation of the Hebrew:

"The sacrifice of the wicked is hateful: how much more when he brings it with an evil intent! A false witness shall perish; BUT THE MAN WHO ATTENDS WILL SPEAK FOREVER. A wicked man hardens his face, but the upright sets up his way. There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel before the Lord. The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but to the Lord belongs deliverance." (Proverbs 21:27-31)

The word that is translated as "attend" is, in Hebrew, "shema," the first word of the prayer, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one..." It is also the root of the name "Simon," or in Hebrew, "Shemon."

Here are excerpts from Strong's translation of "shema":

"To hear intelligently (...attention, obedience...) ... hearken, obey, publish, understand, obedient, diligently ... consent, consider, be content, give ear, indeed, listen, proclaim, regard, ... witness ... undivided attention... to gain or get knowledge ... suggests summoning the person ... Hearing can be both intellectual and spiritual... To hear means not only to hear what is said, but to agree with its intention or petition ... To have a hearing heart is to have discernment or understanding... An annunciation."

The Hebrew word for "speak" used in this proverb is "dabar." Here is the definition:

"...to arrange; but used figuratively (of words), to speak... promise, tell, commune, pronounce, utter, command ... answer, appoint, bid, declare, destroy, give name, rehearse, be spokesman, subdue, teach, think, use... This verb focuses not only on the content of spoken verbal communication but also and especially on the time and circumstances of what is said. Unlike 'amar,' (to say),' 'dabar' often appears without any specification of what was communicated. Those who 'speak' are primarily persons (God or men) ... In 2 Samuel 23:2 David says that the Spirit of the Lord 'spoke' to him ... Among the special meanings of this verb are 'to say,' 'to command,' 'to promise,' 'to commission,' 'to announce,' to order or command,' and 'to utter a song.' [...]" When the word 'dabar' is used as a noun, it means "word" or "utterance." Here is a bit from that definition: "...The 'word' of God indicates God's thoughts and will..."

Whoever gives up his or her own point of view to follow Jesus...becomes a person capable of facing anything

2008-11-01T17:56:00.000-07:00

The title words above are a quote from page 144 of vol I of Is it Possible, and they are followed by these words: "The Bible uses different words: 'Vir obediens loquetur victoriam'" (Proverbs 21:28, presumably from the Vulgate, the Latin translation which the Church uses).

Have you looked up this verse in Proverbs? Here's the New Jerusalem Bible: "The false witness will perish, but no one who knows how to listen will ever be silenced." And here is the Douay Rheims Bible, which is based on the Vulgate: "A lying witness shall perish: an obedient man shall speak of victory. " From what I know of Latin, to listen and to obey have the same root (are they the same word?) As can be seen, Fr. Giussani only cites the second part of the proverb.

And what is obedience? To listen, to meditate on so as to understand, and to imitate. It is an apprenticeship. But in Christianity, obedience is an apprenticeship within the Church where we strive together to help each other better listen, understand, and imitate Jesus Christ — the meaning of life who is with us now.

This is the rosary, for example. To listen to the events of Jesus's life, to ponder them with Mary — the witness of His life, and to imitate His attitude in the midst of those daily things which impinge upon us and that we tend to regard as distractions. Jesus bore His cross, so I accept the burdens of life even when the circumstances seem to be terminal. The circumstances are not terminal but are what's given to us so that we can discover the attitude of Christ before them. The events of Jesus's life are the carnal dimension of the Our Father: thy will be done.

Like the five passages of faith (p 57), obedience consists first in paying attention to something in front of us and second responding to it. Imitation completes the listening. It's the reason for listening and the fruit of the listening. Obedience is the change that comes from encountering the exceptional presence. It is the human, free act of embracing the Father's will.

Concretely, what does obedience mean? It means that I begin to live according to an extraordinary measure instead of the common one. It means that a new affection, a new attitude lives in me and revives me. It means that one day I start paying attention to what I eat. It means that I start to see what needs to be done around the house and start to do it. It means that I look at Karen or the children with a tenderness that is beyond me.

As the Spiritual Exercises taught us: "This Is the Victory That Conquers the World, Our Faith." The bells above a sign, a reminder, of the voice we listen to and follow.

Is It Possible To Live This Way? Vol 2

2008-10-16T11:15:00.000-07:00

Might be available online.

Is It Possible To Live This Way?: An Unusual Approach to Christian Existence: Hope

Synod Intervention by Archbishop Pezzi, Moscow

2008-10-16T02:47:00.000-07:00

Most Rev. Paolo Pezzi, F.S.C.B., Archbishop of God Mother's in Moscow

In this historical moment, the Word of God cannot be separated from the event of Jesus Christ. He is the Logos (Word), the Father's communication, His face (cf. Col 1,15). At the same time, we cannot forget that the words and deeds of Jesus were handed down through the work and suggestion (inspiration) of the Holy Spirit Himself. His life was transmitted and such transmission continues until our days. In this sense the words of Benedict XVI, at the beginning of his encyclical letter on charity are decisive: "Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction".

In present relativism, which leans to level off any differences, so that all words are valid and none is more valid than the other, where all is reduced to a game of opinions, the Biblical word must incarnate itself in the beauty of its witnesses, if it wants to draw the world towards the truth. In Instrumentum Laboris (48), it is cleverly pointed out that "Making the Word of God and the Sacred Scriptures the soul of his pastoral activity, the bishop is capable of bringing the faithful to encounter Christ" [...] "so that, through their own experience, the faithful will see that the words of Jesus are spirit and life (cf. Jn 6:63) [...]".

The announcement of the Word of God, should therefore have as its scope making persons, so to speak, that they are in the presence of the living Person: be witnesses of the Person of Jesus Christ, the Logos became flesh. Or according to Saint Paul's splendid words: it should be "a clear picture of Jesus Christ crucified, right in front of your eyes". The Word of God is a source of an evermore deep and authentic knowledge of Christ, of "the knowledge of God's glory, the glory on the face of Christ" (2 Cor 4:6). Such glory of Christ kindles a fire in us, becomes a desire to witness Him. It is said in Instrumentum Laboris (54) that "listening to the Word of God is a priority for our ecumenical commitment". It is necessary to renew among Christians the tension towards the person of Christ Himself, the desire to understand and know more deeply His mystery. Through the encounter with the Word made flesh, made possible by the Spirit, we rediscover communion with Him: it is the force of the Spirit of the Risen Christ that attracts the scattered people towards His only body.

How Much More Beautiful It Is to Have Free Men Instead of Slaves

2008-10-12T12:16:00.000-07:00

We will have a Beginning day for adults in Kansas in two or three weeks. Last night, however, we had a get together in Atchison, Kansas to listen to readings from Charles Péguy's The Mystery of the Holy Innocents. Lorenzo read the work and matched up sections to go with quotes of Fr. Giussani from Is It Possible Vol I: Faith.

What got Lorenzo to look at The Mystery of the Holy Innocents was this line from Fr. Giussani: "Go read The Mystery of the Holy Innocents by Charles Péguy where God speaks and says how much more beautiful it is to have free men instead of slaves or servants." And here is the section that Lorenzo paired with this quote:

Ask a father if his best moment
Is not when his sons begin to love him like men,
Him as a man,
Freely,
Gratuitously,
As a father whose children are growing up.
As a father if there is not a chosen time above all
And if it is not
Precisely when submission ceases and his sons become men
Love him (treat him) so to speak from knowledge,
As man to man,
Freely,
Gratuitously. Esteem him thus.
Ask a father if he does not know that nothing is equal
To the glance of a man meeting the glance of a man.
Well, I am their father, God says, and I know man's condition.
It is I who made him.
I do not ask too much of them. I only ask for their hearts,
When I have their hearts, I am satisfied, I am not hard to please.
All the slavish submissions are not worth one frank look from a free man.
Or rather, all the slavish submissions in the world repel me and I would give everything
For one frank look from a free man.
For one beautiful action of obedience and tenderness and devotion from a free man.
For a look from Saint Louis,
And even a look from Joinville, for Joinville is less saintly but he is no less free.
(and he is no less a Christian).
And he is no less gratuitous.
And my Son also died for Joinville.
To that liberty, to that gratuitousness I have sacrificed everything, God says,
To that taste I have for being loved by free men,
Freely,
Gratuitously,
By real men virile, adult, firm,
Noble, tender but with a firm tenderness.
To obtain that liberty, that gratuitousness I have sacrificed everything,
To create that liberty, that gratuitousness,
To set going that liberty, that gratuitousness.
To teach him liberty.
Well, with my Wisdom I have not too much
To teach him liberty,
With all the Wisdom of my Providence, I have not too much,
And even with the duplicity of my Wisdom for that double instruction.
What measures I must observe, and how can I calculate them.
Who else can calculate them. And how double-faced I must be
And how prudently I must arrange that deceit
(This is going to scandalize our Pharisees again),
How prudently I must calculate my very duplicity!
What must not my prudence be! I must create, I must teach them liberty
Without risking their salvation. For if I support them too much, they will never learn to swim,
But if I do not support them just at the right moment
They go under, they swallow a nasty mouthful, they dive down,
And they must not sink
In that ocean of turpitude.

Péguy certainly scandalizes us with his familiar images which bring God the Father almost too near to us, and yet what else did Jesus mean when He taught us to call God Father, Abba? The literalness of this Abba comes forth almost nowhere else than in Charles Péguy and the Gospels (it's entirely absent in Milton, for example). For everything that Péguy tells us of the Fatherhood of God comes from his own experience of being a father and being a son. Nothing in Péguy is ever abstract, but always common and everyday.

I asked my six-year old daughter if she wanted to come with me to this reading, which went from 7:30 to 10:00 pm, and she said yes. She enjoyed the socializing and was bored by the reading, and yet it was so important for me that she was there, to remind me of the tangible nearness of the Father that Jesus brings to me, to remind me of that everyday human experience which Péguy demands of his readers.

This Event Remains Present

2008-10-10T04:22:00.000-07:00

-- Rev. Julián CARRÓN, President of Communion and Liberation (SPAIN)

Interpretation of the Bible is one of the most worrisome problems in the Church today. The essence of the challenge brought up by the problem of modern interpretation of Sacred Scriptures was identified years ago by the then Cardinal Ratzinger: “How can I come to a comprehension which is not based on the judgement of my suppositions, a comprehension that permits me to understand the text’s message, giving me back something that does not come from my person?”

Regarding this difficulty, today’s Magisterium of the Church offers us elements to avoid any possible reduction.

It was the Second Vatican Council’s merit to have recuperated a concept of revelation as the event of God in history. In effect, Dei Verbum permits understanding the revelation as the auto- communication’s event of the Trinity through the Son “the mediator and the fullness of all Revelation” (DV 2). It is Christ who “perfected revelation by fulfilling it through his whole work of making Himself present and manifesting Himself: through His words and deeds, His signs and wonders, but especially through His death and glorious resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth” (DV 4).

This event does not belong only to the past, to a certain moment in time and space, but remains present in history, communicating itself through the totality of the Church’s life that receives it. In fact, “Christ’s contemporaneity to each human being of any time is realized through his body which is the Church” (VS 25; cf. FR 11).

The encyclical letter Fides et Ratio characterizes the impact, that the revealed truth provokes in each person that encounters it, with two folded impulse: a) it widens one’s mind to adapt it to the subject; b) it facilitates the comprehension of its deep sense. Instead of mortifying the person’s intellect and liberty, the revelation leads to developing both the highest level of their original condition.

The experience of the encounter with Christ present in the living tradition of the Church is an event and therefore becomes the determining factor of the interpretation of the biblical text. It is the only way to be in harmony with the experience witnessed by the Scripture’s text. In fact, “the right knowledge of the biblical text is therefore accessible only to whom has a lived affinity with what is stated in the text” (PcB 70). Saint Augustin summarizes it realistically: “In manibus nostris sunt codices, in oculis nostris facta”.

[Original text: Italian]

The Word of God is a Fact: It is the Person of Jesus Christ

2008-10-09T04:38:00.000-07:00

-- H.E. Most. Rev. Filippo SANTORO, Bishop of Petrópolis (BRAZIL)

1.The Word of God is a fact: it is the person of Jesus Christ whom the Apostles met as he walked along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and whom the Church proclaims as one who can be met today in the paths of our life.

There is a challenge that this announcement has to overcome; the challenge is above all anthropological. And that is does this fact shows it is able to overcome space and time as something that does not fade away, that does not wear out and answers the desires of a man’s heart in a unique and singular way. Experience shows that things sparkle then fade with time: the Ancient Greek poet Mimnermus said “like the leaves that germinate spring” and along with him Arnault, Leopardi and the literature of all times. The ego also fades and what fascinated us loses its value with time, it is consumed or it no longer attracts us. The big question, which cannot be denied even by contemporary culture, is: does something exist that can fully realizes the needs of our hearts and that lasts in time, forever.

2. The dynamic of Incarnation presents us with the other challenge that it is important to study: the challenge of method. The Word made flesh indicates not only a content of salvation, but also a method by which the Apostles start to understand themselves. In the meeting with Jesus, something is awoken in them which had previously been sleeping and they begin to see the possibility of something positive in their future. The method drawn from Incarnation is, a theme which was developed in great depth by Father Giussani, witnessing the event in which the miracle occurs. In all the biblical meetings with John, Andrew, Zacchaeus, the Samaritan ... by following that man it was possible to encounter more, destiny, the Father. This same method continues after the resurrection through the meeting with the visible body of Christ, the Church, with Peter as its head.

During the V Conference of Aparecida, Latin American Bishops referred back to the opening speech by Pope Benedict in saying: “The very nature of Christianity consists, therefore, in recognizing the presence of Christ and in following Him. That was the marvelous experience enjoyed by the first disciples who, meeting Jesus, were fascinated and amazed by the exceptional person who spoke to them and who was able to provide answers for the hunger and thirst for life in their hearts. John the Evangelist gave us a graphic description of the powerful effect which Jesus had on the first two disciples John and Andrew when they first met Him. Everything began with the question “What do you want?” (Jn 1:38). This was followed by the invitation to live a new experience “Come and see.” (Jn 1:39) This description will remain in history as the only synthesis of the Christian method”. (244)

For this reason, as part of the current discussion on extraordinary ministries, we would like to make the observation that they, alone, cannot provoke the meeting, but can rather lead to an increase in bureaucratization in the Church. Only the action of the Spirit can call the meeting, and as Lumen Gentium 12 says, is at the source of hierarchical and charismatic gifts. Through charisms the Spirit shows how attractive is the face of Christ even for mankind today, arousing the sequence of the Word made flesh.

Face to Face with Christ

2008-10-08T04:02:00.000-07:00

Today, there is a lead article at il sussidario.net, an interview with Antonio Socci, about the Pope's judgment on the financial crisis. I will attempt to translate just a piece of it which is relevant to Fred's recent postings.

Giussani parlava con persone a lui vicine, in un momento di forte entusiasmo al termine di un Meeting di Rimini andato particolarmente bene. Nel mezzo dell’entusiasmo lui se ne uscì con una frase impressionante e vertiginosa: «tutto passa, l’unica cosa che resta è il tuo faccia a faccia con Cristo». E questo è anche il giudizio finale su tutta la nostra esistenza.

At one moment of great enthusiasm at the end of a Meeting in Rimini that had gone particularly well, Giusanni spoke with some people close by. In the middle of the excitement he only offered a single impressive and dizzying statement: "Everything passes, the only thing that remains is you face to face with Christ." And this is the final judgment on all of our existence.

Stability amid Desolation and Consolation

2008-10-07T18:15:00.000-07:00

"Whenever we undertake, carry out, and complete a good work, each of us has had the experience of feeling joy one time but not the next. One time we know how to seize such joy, and the next time we do not. We thus learn that knowing and enjoying do not spring from our own abilities but from God's Grace. In this way, we are healed of the pride of our own choices."

~Augustine

"Nothing plays a greater role in God's pedagogical art than the shift from one to the other extreme. No sooner have we learned something half-way and begun to grasp it than (oh, shock!) out of the warm bath and into the cold! This is meant to ensure that we do not settle into any situation but remain pliable, and to make us recognize that true insight does not come from what we have grasped but from ever- greater readiness and deeper obedience"

~Balthasar

Grain of Wheat, p 109

“Those who run toward the Lord will never lack space… One who is climbing never stops, he moves from beginning to beginning, according to beginnings that never end.”

~Gregory of Nyssa
Theme of the National Diaconia in Chicago 2002

Freedom is the active and affective willingness...

Salvatore, a friend of mine — and yes, you may know him too! — has challenged Karen and me with stability: we need more stability in our lives. What is stability? It is the recognition that nothing can hinder our freedom, our active and affective willingness ... to see ... [the] encounter re-proposed in all your relationships. I can be at the base of the mountain confronted with my incapacity and yet embrace the desire to see Christ's face in such a way that it gets me moving. Or I could be at the top of the mountain and still desire more. For the base of every mountain is the remnant of the last one, as St. Gregory suggests in the quote above. At the Transfiguration, Peter said "Lord, let us build three booths" (alas, the wrong kind of stability). So, even the Transfiguration was the base of another mountain. Elsewhere Jesus exclaims: "For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself does, and he will show him greater works than these, so that you may be amazed" (John 5:20, New Jerusalem Bible).

Freedom: Am I Free?

2008-10-06T20:27:00.000-07:00

"Freedom is the active and affective willingness to see that exceptionality and that greatness of relationship that constituted your first encounter re-proposed in all your relationships." Is it Possible vol 1, p 96

You see? Mountains on top of mountains. Are you ready? Let's go!

What is the Remedy for Childhood Paralysis?

2008-10-03T17:17:00.000-07:00

Dear friends,

Here are a couple of quotes that I have been working with this week. For the full context, please look at page 83 of Is it Possible to Live This Way? vol I. It's from the Assembly at the end of Chapter 2 which tackles the subject of freedom.

"that childhood paralysis that increases in proportion to the object we are in relationship with."

This really grabbed me: paralysis increases in proportion to greatness of the object at hand. I also notice the word childhood here, not childish. This fear is common to all of us, and we first ran across it in childhood. In my case, I was ten or eleven years old on my first Boy Scout campout, which happened also to be a family one. We were in Colorado in the Rocky Mountains, and I was with others climbing a mountain on top of the mountain. Looking down was not the problem, but looking out was — to see a vast horizon of mountaintops in every direction filled me with awe and totally paralyzed me. Not only could I not continue, but it took a concerted effort to get me able to get down. I remember that I had my camera with me and I began to take pictures, and that is what calmed me down enough to let myself be helped off of the precipice.

Fr. Giussani continues:

"what does my freedom do to enter into something so burdensome?"

"Accept! Accept the project of another."

As I think back to that moment, I wonder if the photography was my way of accepting the impossible greatness of being on one mountaintop and seeing all the others.

What's also curious to me is that it wasn't distance from the ground which terrified me but equality with mountains: seeing those imposing giants in the distance and realizing that my circumstance coincided with that greatness.

For about 3 or 4 weeks at my work, I was resisting — fighting — not so much against toil (that too!) but against success, victory, happiness. My work has brought me to some peaks that I do not feel equal to, knowing as I do my own frailty, my own incapacity, my own nothingness. Over the last couple of days, very timidly, I've begun to say yes again to the "project of Another." And what a consolation it is, because I'm not equal to the greatness in which I am set. Because, as Balthasar says God schools us with alternation of consolation and desolation until "we have learned how one can even enjoy in a wholly selfless manner and how to experience enjoyment itself as a service" (Grain of Wheat, 11).

Fr. Giussani recounts his own experience of fear as a child in The Religious Sense, p 129-130.

In the Presence of the Angels from Fr. Meinrad Miller, OSB

2008-10-02T05:18:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow (Thursday) we celebrate the Feast of the Guardian Angels, the patrons of our congregation. St. Benedict had some great quotes about the Angels in his Rule for Monasteries:

We must erect the ladder which appeared to Jacob in his dream, by means of which angels were shown to him ascending and descending (cf Gen 28:12). Without a doubt, we understand this ascending and descending to be nothing else but that we descend by pride and ascend by humility.
Let a man consider that God always seeth him from Heaven, that the eye of God beholdeth his works everywhere, and that the angels report them to Him every hour.
and if our actions are reported to the Lord day and night by the angels who are appointed to watch over us daily, we must ever be on our guard, brethren, as the Prophet saith in the psalm, that God may at no time see us "gone aside to evil and become unprofitable" (Ps 13[14]:3), and having spared us in the present time, because He is kind and waiteth for us to be changed for the better, say to us in the future: "These things thou hast done and I was silent" (Ps 49[50]:21).
"I will sing praise to Thee in the sight of the angels" (Ps 137[138]:1). Therefore, let us consider how it becometh us to behave in the sight of God and His angels, and let us so stand to sing, that our mind may be in harmony with our voice.

Pope Benedict XVI comments on the importance of music for monks during visit to France to commemorate 150th anniversary of Lourdes.September 12, 2008

For Benedict (of Nursia), the words of the Psalm: coram angelis psallam Tibi, Domine – in the presence of the angels, I will sing your praise (cf. 138:1) – are the decisive rule governing the prayer and chant of the monks. What this expresses is the awareness that in communal prayer one is singing in the presence of the entire heavenly court, and is thereby measured according to the very highest standards: that one is praying and singing in such a way as to harmonize with the music of the noble spirits who were considered the originators of the harmony of the cosmos, the music of the spheres. From this perspective one can understand the seriousness of a remark by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who used an expression from the Platonic tradition handed down by Augustine, to pass judgement on the poor singing of monks, which for him was evidently very far from being a mishap of only minor importance. He describes the confusion resulting from a poorly executed chant as a falling into the “zone of dissimilarity” – the regio dissimilitudinis. Augustine had
borrowed this phrase from Platonic philosophy, in order to designate his condition prior to conversion (cf. Confessions, VII, 10.16): man, who is created in God’s likeness, falls in his godforsakenness into the “zone of dissimilarity” – into a remoteness from God, in which he no longer reflects him, and so has become dissimilar not only to God, but to himself, to what being human truly is. Bernard is certainly putting it strongly when he uses this phrase, which indicates man’s falling away from himself, to describe bad singing by monks. But it shows how seriously he viewed the matter. It shows that the culture of singing is also the culture of being, and that the monks have to pray and sing in a manner commensurate with the grandeur of the word handed down to them, with its claim on true beauty. This intrinsic requirement of speaking with God and singing of him with words he himself has given, is what gave rise to the great tradition of Western music. It was not a form of private “creativity”, in which the individual leaves a memorial to himself and makes self-representation his essential criterion. Rather it is about vigilantly recognizing with the “ears of the heart” the inner laws of the music of creation, the archetypes of music that the Creator built into his world and into men, and thus discovering music that is worthy of God, and at the same time truly worthy of man, music whose worthiness resounds in purity.

--Pope Benedict XVI, September 12, 2008

"The faith is not given us in order that we preserve it, but in order that we communicate it. If we don't have the passion to communicate it, we don't preserve it."

--Monsignor Luigi iussani, Written contribution to the XXI plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, 2004

Father Meinrad Miller, OSB
Chaplain of Benedictine College
Subprior of St. Benedict’s Abbey